ON LANGUAGE

ON LANGUAGE; Blue Dog Demo

By William Safire

Published: April 23, 1995

THE BLUE DOGS are poised to bite Newt Gingrich," Jackie Calmes wrote in The Wall Street Journal. "To date, the Republican House speaker has had the votes of these self-described 'Blue Dog Conservative Democrats.' "

Twenty-three Democrats in the House of Representatives who are eager to reduce the Federal deficit now sport lapel pins that depict a blue hound. Lest observers miss the point, the symbol is surrounded by the words "Blue Dog Conservative Democrat."

Early in the Eisenhower Administration, members of a group of similarly unopposing members of the political opposition led by Howard Smith of Virginia called themselves the Boll Weevils after the beetle with a long snout that bored from within the seedpods of the cotton plant grown in the South. In the early 1980's, Representative Charles Stenholm of Texas reapplied the term to Democrats, specifically those supporting Ronald Reagan's tax-cutting conservatism.

In the mid-80's, another term to describe maverick Democrats began to surface in Louisiana. According to W. J. (Billy) Tauzin, now a Louisiana Congressman, a local artist of expanding reputation named George Rodrigue began doing paintings of a blue dog with yellow eyes; a large signboard advertising his home and studio became familiar along Interstate 10 near Lafayette. On that sign was a picture of his favorite subject: the blue dog. (Reached at home, the artist tells me: "The dog I paint was my dog for 10 years. He died, and I started to paint him as a ghost dog, on his journey to try and find me. I've been painting him now for about seven years. His name was Tiffany.")

A Louisiana constituent recently supplied local politicos with a representation of the Rodrigue dog on the aforementioned lapel pin, identifying the wearer as a "Blue Dog Conservative Democrat."

The term is boosted from yellow dog Democrat, which is not a derogation, though yellow dog has a long history in American slang of denoting a cur. (A yellow dog contract is a labor organizer's derisive term for an agreement by employees not to join a union.)

That political phrase was coined in the 1928 Presidential campaign of the New York Democrat Al Smith, a Catholic and a "wet" whose nomination angered many regular Southern Democrats. When Senator Tom Heflin of Alabama (uncle of Howell Heflin, who now occupies that seat) bolted the party rather than support the nominee, other Alabamians who remained grimly loyal to the party popularized the line "I'd vote for a yellow dog if he ran on the Democratic ticket."

According to Representative Tauzin, a clear distinction exists between the yellow and blue dogs: "A blue dog Democrat is a little more discriminatin', more open-minded." Representative Stenholm, the former boll weevil now a blue dog, says the blue dog Democrat "has a little better sense of smell than a yellow dog, and sometimes will bite you, which a yellow dog Democrat won't do." The name of the group, reverberating with American political history, is far better than the other title the 23 mavericks go by, the Coalition, making up part of the Mainstream Forum, moniker for a loose amalgam of centrists.

A related phrase is brass collar Democrat, perhaps derived from the usage noted by the slang lexicographers Barrere and Leland in 1895, "Big Dog With the Brass Collar," meaning "Democratic leader"; it has come to mean "proud party loyalist," though not so determinedly regular as yellow dog Democrat.

If a blue dog is now in play, what about a red dog?

That is reserved for football: it is a pass rush by linebackers, synonymous with blitz, although that defensive play often has one or more defensive backs rushing the quarterback. According to Tim Considine's "Language of Sport," the phrase originated during the 1949 season when the New York Giants guard Red Ettinger, filling in at linebacker, bolted from his position to rush the quarterback; asked about the play, he replied he was "just doggin' the quarterback a little," giving rise to "Red's doggin'," which became the verb and noun red dog.

A skilled dialectologist would make political sense out of the following sentence, if the party loyalists decide to put political heat on the mavericks: "The yellow dogs decided to red-dog the blue dogs." No Problem

The 1996 Presidential campaign has just blessed us with its first addition to the English language.

Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Senator who announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination last month, is chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. In an interview, he noted that the long delay in filling the post of Director of Central Intelligence was "especially problemsome."

That word triggered the ire of Louis Jay Herman of New York, godfather of the Gotcha! Gang. "I find it bothersome and troublesome (and then some)," he writes, "that a Presidential hopeful should think that problemsome is an English word. Please zap him at once."

Not me. (Or "Not I," as nominative freaks would insist.) Here is the long-sought answer to the problematic problem.

The problem with problematic -- a word much in vogue among academicians and foreign-policy wonks -- is that it has two different meanings.

The first is "difficult; having the nature of a problem; hard to grasp or solve." Example: "Devising a strategy for capturing the Republican nomination when you are a former crime-busting prosecutor is easy, but when you are unequivocally pro-choice, it becomes problematic."

The second meaning is given in Webster's New World as "not settled; yet to be determined; uncertain." Example: "That Specter will be supported by Barry Goldwater in Arizona is likely, but an endorsement from Anita Hill is problematic."

Merriam-Webster's Tenth Collegiate covers those two senses and adds a third: "expressing or supporting a possibility," as in "The notion of an Eastern moderate capturing the nomination may now seem remote, but some observers say it's still problematic."

Presented with one word burdened with three meanings, the listener or reader must examine the context to figure out the correct sense every time; what kind of word is that?

It's a word to avoid. But now, thanks to Senator Specter, we have a new word whose meaning is unambiguous: problemsome, coined, as Mr. Herman suggests, on the analogy of bothersome and troublesome. It should be defined only as "presenting a problem; difficult." No other senses to intrude and confuse.

Down with problematic, which sounds like the brand name of a camera with a flash that never goes off. Here's a write-in vote for problemsome, the word that solves. (Pity it's not easier to pronounce.)